Ritual, Power and the Weekend Arena

In a March 2026 paper published in the journal Science Advances, which focused on variability in governance along the autocratic-democratic axis, my coauthors and I found that one of the strongest associations for the 40 case observations, which were part of our study, was between the nature of rituals and the concentration of power.

For this global sample, autocratically organized societies were characterized by spectacles that foment fear and awe, while participatory rituals predominated in more democratically organized contexts. For example, in the region where I study (Oaxaca, Mexico), when governance was typified by distributed power relations, the pre-Hispanic rubber ball game was played in a large court adjacent to a broad, flat open plaza, the Main Plaza at Monte Albán, a space that could accommodate many of the settlement’s inhabitants. Later, however, as political power became more concentrated, the size of ball courts was reduced, access to them became more restricted, and some were even built immediately adjacent to the houses or palaces of ruling families.

Social scientists have long recognized that communal rituals are a universal human experience that binds people together in various ways. Spectacles, often rich in disorienting noise, shock, and awe, tend to captivate observers through the powerful figures at the center of the spectacle, who inspire fear and wonderment, reinforcing authoritarian cults of personality. In contrast, participatory rituals like communal dancing, singing, or chanting tend to instill camaraderie among participants, solidarity, and trust among those involved. As a student of history and a sports fan, the mirrored reflections of the past provide an analytical perspective about the final Knicks game on June 13, a sports agenda that cannot be ignored.

During the 2026 National Basketball Association playoff between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, Madison Square Garden, the storied home of the Knicks, once again became like a civic commons after a 53-year championship drought. The competitiveness of the Knicks during the playoffs elevated the space from merely being a site of entertainment to a participatory ritual arena. The crowd did not passively observe; it chanted, rose, groaned, anticipated, and collectively willed momentum into existence. One needed to only look at the faces in the stands—season ticket holders and first-timers, celebrities and subway riders alike—to notice that the sight was closer to what might be considered an integrative ritual: one in which meaning is not imposed from above but generated, often with spontaneity, among participants.

Basketball, by definition, is a team sport, but this is typified by the game that the Knicks currently play. It is not about consistent domination by a central figure. Even the most celebrated player, Jalen Brunson, depends on coordination, timing, and trust in his teammates. The drama unfolds collectively, and its outcome remains contingent on who makes a foul shot and who grabs a rebound. Participation matters—not just symbolically but materially. The arena amplifies the idea, however imperfectly enacted, that communal engagement shapes outcomes. And these outcomes transcended the arenas where the Knicks games were played, stimulating joy and collective actions, and bringing people together in the desire for a common outcome.

By contrast, the spectacle of an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, staged in a garish steel cage, on the grounds of the White House on June 14 operated on a fundamentally different ritual logic. It was not designed for mutual participation but for spectacle: with the concentration of attention onto a staged center, where one-on-one conflict and mayhem are distilled into physical dominance and symbolic submission. The audience’s role is not to join but to witness—to be awed, to see blood and hear pain, be unsettled, and ultimately to orient themselves toward the figures who command the stage and oversee the event.

The choice of venue was not incidental. The White House has long functioned as a site of state ritual. But traditionally, those rituals—press briefings, public ceremonies, even contentious protests beyond its gates—are tethered, at least aspirationally, to norms of decorum, accountability, and public engagement. Introducing a choreographed combat spectacle into that space shifts its symbolic significance. It recasts a locus of governance into an arena of performance, where the aesthetic of dominance and self-promotion, by a small network of cronies, overshadows any ethical prospect of leading to wider participation.

This is precisely the distinction our comparative work on governance and ritual helps illuminate. When power is broadly distributed, rituals tend to be inclusive, iterative, and co-constructed. They require participants to see one another as collaborators in a shared process, even when competition is involved. In contrast, when power is tightly concentrated, rituals often become spectacles—staged experiences that reinforce hierarchy, channel emotions toward a focal point, and reduce the audience to spectators instead of actors. The Knicks, for all the commercialism of modern sports, still lean toward the former model. Their playoff games invited identification not with an owner but with a collective—however abstract—called a team, a city, a fan base. Victory was widely shared across an entire metropolitan area, communally. The ritual binds laterally, person-to-person.

A UFC spectacle staged in the orbit of political power points in the other direction. It binds vertically. The emotional energy of the crowd is drawn upward and inward, toward a center that is insulated from participation. The unpredictability of sport is replaced by an orchestrated spectacle; even the violence, ostensibly raw, is framed and contained to produce maximum symbolic effect. None of this is to suggest that one form of ritual is wholly virtuous and the other entirely malign. Spectacle has always been part of human societies, and participatory rituals can exclude to the same extent as they can include. Madison Square Garden is not immune to hierarchy, nor is fandom evenly accessible. But the contrast remains as glaring as instructive because it reveals not just different entertainments, but different models of how people relate to power—and to one another.

At stake is more than this season’s recreational programming. Rituals, whether ancient ball games in Mesoamerica or modern sporting events in New York, are not peripheral to political life; they are constitutive of it. They shape how individuals experience belonging, authority, and agency. They encode assumptions about who acts and who is meant to watch. The event at the White House reinforces values such as “might makes right” and life is a “zero-sum game.”

Alternatively, in an era when democratic practices often feel attenuated, the spaces where participation is still enacted—even imperfectly—carry heightened significance, thereby fostering shared aims and emphasizing the potential win-win-win outcomes that interdependence and collaborative action can generate. The roar of a crowd that believes its collective voice matters stands in quiet contrast to spectacles that ask only for attention, passivity, and allegiance.

We would do well to recognize the difference.